


more adventurous

by navigator



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, New Year's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 20:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navigator/pseuds/navigator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry finds Nick before midnight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	more adventurous

**Author's Note:**

> this hasn't been proof-read and was written in an hour -- forgive any mistakes! honestly just some super self-indulgent fluff. i hope it goes without saying, but: i made this up and i don't think it's going to happen or that it's ever happened. HAPPY NEW YEAR!! i'm on [tumblr](http://quitefinished.tumblr.com), too.

"Just because you're invited to three parties doesn't mean you need to go to all of them, you know," Gemma says, her face two inches from the mirror as she layers on another coat of mascara. She turns around to look at Harry, twisting the wand back into the bottle. "I mean, you probably will anyway, but you're gonna be fucked by the end of the night."

Harry pushes his hair back and wonders if he might need more Surf Spray to keep it as high as he wants it for the rest of the night.

"See? You don't even listen to me," Gemma laughs, and Harry looks away from the mirror to poke her in the arm.

"I'll be fucked if I go to all three parties," he parrots back at her, and she rolls her eyes. Her red lips make her look older, and Harry's suddenly glad they're splitting up tonight; he doesn't really want to bear witness to what his sister is like when she's drunk and presumably on the prowl.

"Are you ready, then? Glitter boots strapped tight?"

"They _are_ , actually," Harry says, faux-haughty as he holds the door open for her. The two cars are already parked outside of his house, idling near the curb. "Happy new year," he belts in a falsetto, drawing out the last word as he hugs her with one arm.

"Say hi to Nick for me," she says, patting his shoulder.

Harry's mouth twitches, but he refuses to take the bait. "Don't tell me what to do, Gemma."

He earns his second eyeroll in five minutes, surely some kind of record, and he's contemplating throwing in an awful joke for good measure, but she shivers and wraps her coat tighter around herself and calls out, "Good _bye_ , Harry," as she rushes toward the first car, and he's alone, considering Gemma's advice.

He may not have to go to three parties on New Year's Eve, but he's sure going to try.

*

Ben's house is first, then. Harry is the youngest person there by at least ten years, but it's not like he really _minds_ , or anything. The drinks are just a prerequisite for the trip to the pub that comes after, but Harry doesn't plan on staying for that. He spends his first glass of champagne with his phone in hand, staring down into the glowing screen as he looks through his Instagram feed. Nick's name shows up four times in a row, and he feels a pang of desperation because that's where he really wants to be; to be part of the glow that surrounds Nick Grimshaw.

What stops him from rushing to their pub is the photo of Nicco holding two shots up in front of his eyes. Harry puts his phone away after that, even when he sees a text from Nick asking where he is and when he's going to be there.

"Ben," Harry says, and Ben smiles, knowing what's coming.

"You're off, then?" he asks, clapping him on the shoulder and then the side of the neck. "Tell Nick we said hi."

Harry bites the inside of his cheek and tries not to roll his eyes because the smug look on Ben's face will be entirely too infuriating to withstand if he reacts at all. "If I see him, I will," he says, and hands Ben his empty champagne flute. "Happy New Year!" He claps his hands together and grins wide, waving to the rest of the party as he sees himself out.

The Nick thing might get old by the end of the night, he thinks. The worst part is that it makes him hot around the collar when people call him out like that, when they put him on the spot in that subtle, annoying kind of way that only the people who know him best can manage to do.

They don't know the half of it, anyway. They don't know what Nick is to him, but hell, even _Harry_ doesn't know what Nick is to him, or what they are to each other, or why New Year's Eve seems to bring out the hopeless romantic that wants to slap a label on them and call it a day. He doesn't really know why it feels important that he save Nick for last, not when there's never any guarantee that they'll wind up with each other, anyway. He's not betting on that. His hopes are light. He's fine, really. They've had some great times together, absolutely, and they've all come with no strings attached.

Except, of course, the one string that keeps Harry tied to Nick like a tether no matter if they're on two separate continents or not. He can't seem to let him go, not entirely, even when the peripatetic nature of his life offers him so many new people to love and to learn and to fuck. There's a void that seems to belong expressly to Nick, and Harry is still learning to accept that void. It's possible he already loves it.

*

The sound of broken glass crunching beneath his boots will always sound like London to Harry, and it's precisely that sort of bullshit faux-poetic thought that lets him know he's sort of drunk. The club was too loud and his time there was spent pounding the drinks Liam gave him and hugging a few people whose names he still can't remember. He hopes they didn't notice. One of them was wearing a crown made of plastic drinking straws, and Harry asked if he could keep it, so he's wearing that now, too, as he clambers into yet _another_ car. His phone won't stop buzzing, and he finally stares down at it, seeing that Nick has taken to using capslock exclusively.

_PIX IS DOING BODY SHOTS_ , the first reads. And then: _MAN PASSED OUT AT BAR AND HE LOOKS JUST LIKE GEORGE MICHAEL_ , along with a picture attached that makes Harry snort because, yes, he does. The most recent text arrives when Harry's still reading the others: _I'M KISSING GEORGE MICHAEL AT MIDNIGHT I GUESS_ followed by the prayer emoji. It's twenty minutes to 2014, and Harry feels a jolt of something like butterflies in his stomach. 

_I'm on my way George Michael,_ Harry types back, and then reads Nick's texts again, trying to decipher whether or not he is hoping to kiss the George Michael-ganger or if he wants Harry there to take his place.

It's a fucking _kiss_. They fucked last week, and Harry's concerned about a kiss.

It's just that a kiss in a pub won't immediately lead to more than that, and they've only ever done _more than that_ in one go. The end of the night is Harry-and-Nick time, when they still have yellow spots in their vision from the cameras that flashlight their way toward Nick's house. None of them suspect -- or maybe they do, Harry doesn't know, it doesn't matter -- that the second the door closes Nick's mouth is at his throat, that they forego a kiss in favor of palming each others' cocks before they even get past the foyer, ignoring Puppy's frantic dance around their feet.

And that's all it's ever been. All or nothing. Harry sleeps in his bed because, in moments that seem more revealing than Nick makes them out to be, he asks him to stay and masks the honesty of the question with a comical whine and a grapple at Harry's arms like he's a desperate thing, a mockery of someone who doesn't like to sleep alone. But he doesn't like to sleep alone. Harry knows that.

Harry's legs don't stop shaking through the entire drive to the bar. He all but sprints inside with ten minutes left to midnight, but it's actually Nicco he sees first.

"Harry!" he calls, throwing up his arms. He sloshes a bit of something sweet over the side of his glass and laughs into the quick hug he offers. Harry's chest feels tight, and he thinks he might be blushing red. Nicco is nice. That's about the nicest thing Harry can think about him without venturing into _this is fucking irrational_ territory.

"Alright?" Harry asks, and Nicco nods, rendered temporarily mute by the sip of his drink he's just taken. He reaches out to pluck the makeshift crown from Harry's head, and puts it on his own. Harry reaches up to fix his hair out of habit.

"Everyone is back here, okay?" His accent is even thinner than the last time Harry saw him; he's going to sound Northern soon enough. Harry follows him from the bar back to a round circle of couches that he recognizes very well.

Nick's sitting in the exact spot Harry was forced to receive a lap dance from a very polite stripper on his birthday earlier this year. He's wearing a navy suit, impeccably tailored, and is gesturing wildly with his long hands. His loud mouth carries even over the music.

"Hi," Harry drawls to no one in particular, and it's Aimee who hears him first. She smacks him on the bum as he walks by, around the table in the center of the couches so he can reach to pluck the drink from Nick's hands by way of a greeting.

"Oh!" Nick shouts when he turns to look up at him. He's drunk, but he's the best drunk person Harry's ever met. He's even more fun, if possible. Harry grins, sheepish before Nick's even teased him about anything, but he knows it's coming. "I thought the cabbie might've killed you, or sommat, it only took you three fucking hours to get here."

"I had parties," Harry says, squeezing between Ian so he can sit and shove himself up against Nick. He hopes no one else wants to talk to him. He's being terribly impolite, but he can't help it, and he's a little too drunk to split his attention between anyone other than Nick right now. He smells good and spicy and he's warm, so comfortable that Harry regrets having been anywhere other than right beside him all night. "Two other parties, actually."

"Were they fun parties?" Nick asks, smiling in a way that Harry reads as reluctant but fond nonetheless.

Harry nods. "Ben says hi."

" _Ben_ ," Nick says, and Harry repeats it after him, laughs for no reason other than that everything Nick says is funny if he says it in the right way, and Nick must think so, too, because he's laughing in that sort of squeaky way he does when he's genuinely tickled. Harry wants to kiss his face, but he settles for resting his hand on his thigh while he sips from Nick's drink, something bitter that makes Harry frown and hand it back to him immediately.

"It's not poison," Nick laughs. "D'you want something else?"

Harry shakes his head _no_ , stares hard at Nick's mouth. "I've got _everything I need_ ," he grins, the words coming out slow and sloppy because he knows they're saccharine and horrible. He's only joking. Mostly. They can joke about things like this because Harry's too scared to say it for real, and this is as close as he can get. "Right here. Bit of music, bit of champagne. A dapper blue suit, like, look at you, this is proper--"

"Oh, shut up," Nick groans, rolling his eyes, shoving Harry's compliment off before it can even stick. He's the worst at it, though, because Harry can see he's pleased, and Nick's smile gives him away, anyway. "Can't believe--"

Whatever's next is cut off by someone on a microphone announcing there's only a minute left before midnight, and Nick raises his eyebrows at Harry amidst a room full of screams. Harry's got butterflies, and he shivers once, hard enough that Nick has to feel it.

"This is it," Nick grumbles, covers Harry's hand with his own. Harry's ready for him to launch into some sort of mockery, but Nick glances his lips and then his eyes with an expression that's more intense than sarcastic. "A good year," he says.

"Tell me something," Harry says, and Nick nods, swallows hard. Harry can't believe he's going to ask this, but he has to just--

"In 2014, do you think--"

Nick laughs and shakes his head, like he can't believe he's going to say it, and then -- "I'm crazy about you," Nick says. Someone shouts _TEN!_ and the people around them stand up, and Harry feels like he's dreaming, can only ask, loudly, _"What_?"and Nick laughs and reaches for his cheek.

_SEVEN!_

"You can't -- don't just say that," Harry says, and smiles, hesitant, but Nick brushes his thumb over his cheek and looks right at him, and Harry wants to believe he can read him well enough to know he that he's not just fucking with him. He wouldn't. He doesn't think he would.

At _FOUR!_ Nick drags Harry onto his feet and they clutch each others' arms and hips, and their timing is off because it's still only _TWO!_ when Nick grabs him by the face and kisses him, and it's at _ONE!_ that Harry shuts his eyes and does the same, his fingers pushing back through the hair at Nick's temples as their mouths fit together. Nick kisses like how it feels to spin and spin and spin until you're dizzy, or at least that's what it does to Harry; makes him feel like he could fall if he doesn't hold on tight, but Nick doesn't let him go.

Auld Lang Syne blares through the speakers, and Nick presses one more kiss against the corner of Harry's mouth, more intimate than the other, somehow, more private. Their eyes meet for a second and then they're back to reality, belting along to the tune because none of them know the words. Harry feels drunker, now, but that's probably due in part to Nick's words repeating over and over in his head -- _crazy about you_ , he'd said. He squeezes Nick on the waist and thinks this year his resolution is only to have more of this; to chase this feeling.


End file.
